Recently in Amazin Avenue Category

And now a dispatch from the endeavors of Real Me.

The Amazin Avenue Annual--to which I am contributing--is now available for preorder via ACTA. As Amazin Avenue head honcho Eric Simon explains, ordering it this way means more $ for the site and for the publisher, which in turn assures that we'll be able to continue producing this tome each year. So if you can spare the shekels, consider buying it in this fashion, as opposed to saving a few pennies at Amazon. Sound good? Good.

Once again, if my prose is no draw, consider purchasing your own copy for the writing of such giants as Joe Posnanski, Will Leitch, Faith and Fear in Flushing's Jason Fry and Greg Prince, and many more. And if you're curious about what I do have in this volume, I wrote an expanded, ginormous post-mortem on the 1999/2000 seasons (which I'm a bit hung up on, in case you hadn't noticed). I also have a piece on Met Killers: are they really as Met-Kill-y as we think? Only one way to find out! READ THE BOOK.

I'm contributing a few pieces to the Amazin' Avenue Annual, a Mets-centric stat-friendly companion to the upcoming baseball season which should be out by March 1 (in both print and Kindle-y versions). I was already excited about this, but I got doubly-triply-quadruply excited when the outside contributors were officially announced yesterday, and it's a fearsome lineup indeed.

Who, you ask? Why, Ken Davidoff from Newsday. Deadspin editor emeritus WIll Leitch. SNY blogger/sandwich enthusiast Ted Berg. Greg Prince and Jason Fry from Faith and Fear in Flushing, my favorite Mets blog I don't write for.

But best of all, the book will include Joe Posnanski. Yes, that Joe Posnanski, the best baseball writer there is by a country mile. SI.com scribe, author of The Machine, and, again, the best baseball writer there is. His blog posts are always a treat to read, in spite of--actually, because of--their enormous lengths. Kinda like what Bill Simmons would be like if he dialed down the douche from 11 to 0 and excised the Karate Kid references.

Knowing that I'm going to have work in the same book as Joe Posnanski is at once humbling and terrifying. It's like living on the same street as a famous architect; you feel like you have to keep your house in tip-top shape if Frank Lloyd Wright is just down the block.

So if my prose won't get you to purchase this tome, I hope some of the aforementioned heavyweights will. And also Joe Posnanski because JOE POSNANSKI. C'MON ALREADY.

In conclusion, Joe Posnanski.

As I alluded to in my Happy New Year post, I will be contributing to this year's Amazin Avenue Annual. I enjoyed it as a consumer last year, and I'm really excited to be working on it this year, when it will be a physical book in real, non-imaginary stores. (eBook version will be available as well, or so I'm told; more details will follow as soon as I know what's what.)

One of the things I'm working on is a piece on a hypothetical team comprised solely of Mets Killers--often (but not always) the kind of players transform from mediocre to Hall-of-Fame level when playing the Mets. I'm polling readers position-by-position* to see who has inflicted the most pain upon the psyche of the fan. The idea is to react to the question in a completely emotional, irrational way, without looking up stats to see if your choice has actually enjoyed great success against the Mets.

* Except for third base, because we all know who'd win that race. Hint: he's standing to your left right now.

My first poll, for shortstop, is up right now. Early polling indicates Jimmy Rollins is the most Mets murderous man among mshortstops.* Agree? Disagree? If you don't vote, you can't complain.**

* The m is silent
** Completely untrue

Did you know the Mets might field an all-home-grown infield in 2011? I did! And I wrote at Amazin Avenue about how crazy that is, in light of team history. How crazy, you ask? Don't be such a big shot. Click the link and find out.

Over at Amazin Avenue, I've been doing a series of posts that dip into the Vast and Dusty Scratchbomb VHS Archives to pull forth some videophonic gems from baseball's hoary past. Today, a clip from a 1987 Year in Review special produced by Sports Extra, the long-running Sunday night sports highlight show on Channel 5. See some exciting footage of Doc Gooden's rehab!